Cōsta

given name · Latin script

Cōsta is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country: 38,265 people, counted by the Census Bureau in 2010. Recorded meaning: From Old Galician-Portuguese costa, from Latin costa, from Proto-Indo-European *kost-.

  • UYUruguay1 in 179(measured from records)
  • ESSpain1 in 1.8K
  • CHSwitzerland1 in 1.8K

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

United States (measured from records)

38,265 people, 2010

Record sources
466 (measured from records)

corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling

strongest: highest-authority source

1 in 179 (inferred from the name graph)

Uruguay

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Spellings & scripts

(measured from records)

One other spelling is counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Costa in US United States, ES Spain, CH Switzerland.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin

(measured from records)
Derivation of Cōsta: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Cōsta
  1. Old Galician-Portuguesecosta(measured from records)
  2. Latincosta(measured from records)
  3. Proto-Indo-European*kost-(measured from records)

From Old Galician-Portuguese costa, from Latin costa, from Proto-Indo-European *kost-.

Cited for this meaning 5

  • Dizionario dei cognomi italiani
  • A Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese
  • Wiktionary
  • Dicionário dos sobrenomes italianos
  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 29 languages in the etymology graph.

Where the surname Cōsta is found

(measured from records)

Cōsta counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.

Where Cōsta is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
US United States#98838,2651 in 8.7K38KCosta466
ES Spain—27,8151 in 1.8K28KCosta109
AR Argentina—22,4041 in 2K22K—5
UY Uruguay—18,9281 in 17919K—1
CH Switzerland#5084,5651 in 1.8K4.6KCosta59

38,265 people counted by Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010, 2010. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.

Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); INE — Apellidos más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal); RENAPER — Apellidos (person counts, national); INE Uruguay — Apellidos más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); BFS — Familiennamen der Wohnbevölkerung (surnames). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).

Other names spelled this way

(inferred from the name graph)

Cōsta is also recorded as another name, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Lao surname24 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Laos, Thailand, United States, United Kingdom

    Languages: Lao, Thai

    Also written Costa, Kositanon, Khotta, Kostas, คอสตา

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Evidence

(measured from records)

No register attests this spelling yet

None of the official registers or reference works in our corpus lists Cōsta under this spelling. The statistics on this page rest on person records, and the related names are inferred from the name graph.

Frequently asked questions

What does the name Cōsta mean, and where does it come from?
From Old Galician-Portuguese costa, from Latin costa, from Proto-Indo-European *kost-. Recorded by Dizionario dei cognomi italiani and A Frequency Dictionary of Portuguese and 3 other sources.
Which countries have the most people with the surname Cōsta?
In the United States, the national register counted about 38 thousand people named Cōsta, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled costa. After it come Spain, Argentina, Uruguay and Switzerland; the country table on this page ranks them.
Where is Cōsta most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Cōsta is densest in Uruguay — about 1 in 179 people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Cōsta?
In the United States, the national register counted 38,265 people named Cōsta in 2010, about 1 in 8.7 thousand residents.
How common is Cōsta compared with other names?
In the United States, Cōsta is the 988th most common surname of 6,282,806 surnames recorded there.

What do you want to know about Cōsta?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/c%C5%8Dsta

The payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.

About this data

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Cōsta” — ranked 890th in the United States (Census Bureau). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.

See how Cōsta parses inside a full name →